Seals With Clubs Closes Down

Late last week, major Bitcoin poker website Seals With Clubs announced it was closing its doors effective immediately.

Upon visiting www.sealswithclubs.eu, you are no longer greeted by a top-notch poker room, but rather by an administrative letter describing the shutdown and plans for the future. All that is left to do now is withdraw any funds with the site and wait for further updates.

According to the letter, the decision to cease operations at SWC was because “On approximately February 11th, 2015, several events occurred related to operational security that we consider to indicate Seals With Clubs now operates in a perpetual state of jeopardy.”

While it remains uncertain whether Seals With Clubs had its security breached in another way or had issues internally, one thing is certain – the chairman of the site, Bryan Micon, intends to reopen the site in the near future. The letter notes how this future endeavor is essentially Micon’s baby and will not have the same administrative structure as the original page.

In fact, Micon published a video on YouTube two days ago (the same day the letter was published on Seals’ site), which happens to be the only feature of swcpoker.eu, where he appears to be enjoying life on the beach. Bryan “the Icon” Micon (as he refers to himself) talks about a “tumultuous few days” (with more than a hint of sarcasm) due to the shut down, and then holds a “moment of silence” (more sarcasm) for his fallen site.

There is something odd about the video – it should be a video message to Seals’ users about the shutdown, but it certainly comes off as more of a commercial for Micon’s new project, swcpoker.eu. He even suggests that players “withdraw the entirety of it [their balance], and if you’d like, join me at swcpoker – Bitcoin poker 2.0”.

With other large Bitcoin sites recently shutting down due to hacks or breaches, it remains to be seen whether this really was a security matter or an issue of internal dispute. It will also be interesting to see just how quickly the new site is up and running and what exactly it will be like. For now, for better or worse, players who have accounts at Seals should heed Micon’s advice and withdraw their balances as that option won’t be available forever.